


Theobroma

by tiamatv



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Castiel Learns to be Human (Supernatural), Domesticity in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Food Issues, Kevin Tran Lives, M/M, Season/Series 09, Winchester Family Fluff (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25414135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: “But I don't like chocolate,” Castiel told them, his forehead creasing.“You don’t likechocolate?Cas, what’ve we been teaching you all this time? Jesus,” Dean exclaimed, indignant.This, Sam thought, could go nowhere good.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 46
Kudos: 269





	Theobroma

**Author's Note:**

> Similar to [Spicier Ginger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24497785), I'm pretending there is no parasitic angel in-house. This, however, is an unrelated little blurp that got written in response to a conversation on Profound Bond a few weeks ago. It is unbetaed and just generally silly!

Sam Winchester had spent five years watching his aggressively closeted brother and Castiel, an angel who could not have possibly cared less about the depth of Dean’s closet, dance around each other. Stare at each other. Drag each other out of Hell (literally, in Dean’s case) and into Hell (fortunately metaphorically, though, well, there was probably still time for that). Dean _prayed_ to Cas, had been doing it for years, and Sam was willing to believe it was not just the goofy call-outs that Dean managed whenever Sam was actually listening.

Not anymore, though. There would be none of that, anymore.

Sam _was_ sorry Cas had lost his wings, and his grace. He _had_ been shocked to see him at the bunker door, only just catching a glimpse of him wet, bedraggled and shadow-eyed before Dean shouldered Sam bodily aside. Cas barely managed a “Hello, Dean,” and one peek through his lashes before he crumpled onto the stoop.

But Sam wasn’t sorry Cas had made it to them in one piece, no matter how many of his awful brothers and sisters Cas thought he had after him. Cas was _his_ friend as well as Dean’s angelic best buddy, or, well, whatever he was to Dean. Regardless, Sam had been worried about him, too.

They hauled Cas in with one of his arms draped over each of their shoulders, stumbling and half-carried, and set him down at a table with water and a towel. Sam had to stop Cas from guzzling down the contents of the pitcher without even using a glass.

(Cas’s annoyed squint at him made him think everything would be okay, though.)

“Welcome home, buddy,” Dean told him, putting a reheated burrito down in front of Cas and reaching over to ruffle his hair—dark and greasy, long enough now to hang over his eyes.

Cas was in bad shape, and he stank, but he was _here_. And the tension that had lined Dean’s shoulders like a hair shirt and pinched deeper lines in his forehead with every day that went by without a word from Cas had washed away in the thin, sticky drizzle outside.

No, Sam wasn’t sorry that Cas was here. That Cas had, as Dean had said without so much as batting an eyelash, come home.

Even if Cas spent too long in the shower. And complained about urination. And was really remarkably picky about food.

And, one memorable breakfast, walked into the kitchen looking pinched, and stated, “Why do humans wake up with erections? It’s uncomfortable. This is a very inconvenient design flaw.”

Dean dropped the spatula onto his foot. Sam choked on his smoothie. Kevin’s orange juice tried to escape through his nose.

(Alright, so Cas’s education in modern cultural norms wasn’t always going smoothly.)

Take today, for example.

“No, Dean. To the left—the _left,_ I said—towards your mouth—that is not—” Cas threw up a hand and looked exasperated. A lot of emotion looked almost exaggerated on his face—Sam had always known he was stoic, but he hadn’t realized that that could carry over onto him being human, too—but exasperation looked _exactly_ familiar. “Dean, _how_ would you even have gotten food on that spot on your jaw?”

Dean looked up from where he was pawing at the angle of his jawline just underneath his ear—probably just to tease Cas, though Sam couldn’t guarantee that. Dean’s grin was brilliant and, since he still had chocolate on his front teeth and a blob of it at the corner of his mouth, _horrible_. “Cas, you’ve seen me eat, right?”

Dean had a point.

Cas narrowed his eyes to a glare that should have shot sparks, leaned in, and swept his thumb pointedly over the thick smear of melted chocolate at the corner of Dean’s lower lip. Sam blinked in amused curiosity over the edge of his laptop—Cas went at it with the kind of concentration he imagined Cas had previously reserved for when he’d created antelopes.

Two of Cas’s unexpected human weirdnesses? First, he had absolutely beautiful table manners—pretty enough that Sam thought that if Cas hung around for long enough it _might_ be possible that at some point Dean would consistently chew with his mouth closed, just by osmosis. And second, he was kind of a neat freak: he _loved_ being clean, enjoyed folding laundry, and could be found absently dusting things as he read.

Angels made no sense.

Dean had never been a _neat_ eater _._ That said, Sam was starting to suspect that his big brother’s current _truly appalling_ eating habits (including but not limited to dropping grains of rice on his shirt, getting ketchup on his face, or slurping barbecue sauce off his fingers) were purely to mess with his favorite angel. The one he flatly refused to admit _was_ his favorite angel.

Brothers also made no sense.

Cas made a small, raspy “Hm!” of triumph when Dean’s lip was chocolate-free. Dean smirked at him and opened his mouth again—no doubt to say something that was going to make Cas sigh, Sam wonder again about birth order theory, and Kevin ask the ceiling which of them was the youngest here.

Sam did _not_ expect Cas to, smoothly and casually, stick the thumb he’d used to clean off that chocolate into Dean’s _mouth_.

From the way Dean’s eyes rounded, neither did Dean.

Sam didn’t know if it was _intentional_ that Dean’s next reaction was to close his parted lips around the finger in his mouth, whatever he’d been thinking of saying left unsaid. But he was pretty sure he could have lived an entire _lifetime_ without hearing Cas calmly say, “I think you have it all, please don’t bite me,” as he draw his wet thumb out from between Dean’s lips.

Then, as if he’d done nothing of import at all, Cas rested his forearm back on the book on Akkadian warlocks he’d been leafing through before Dean had started bothering him. To all appearances, he kept reading.

Perched in a large wingback chair with a presumably obstructed view of the Dean and Castiel Show, Kevin sighed, loudly. There was a loud ‘clunk’ that sounded like him letting his head rest against the hard top of whatever he was reading.

“Cas, uh,” Dean managed after an increasingly taut silence, his voice vibrating into a bass octave before he cleared his throat. “Pretty sure most people wipe food off someone’s face and then lick their _own_ fingers.”

What? Sam’s head whipped around to glare at Dean. No, most people used a _napkin_. Just because _Dean_ had done that kind of disgusting thing to Sam when they’d been kids didn’t mean _anyone_ should ever do it. It was only marginally less awful than when Dean used to lick his finger to try and get dirt off Sam’s forehead.

“Why would I do that? I don’t like chocolate,” Cas answered, his forehead creasing, “and you do.”

There was a sort of insane process to that. In true Cas fashion, it even made logical sense. Dean liked chocolate, and it had been on his lips before Cas had wiped it off. Therefore, of course Cas would feed Dean his thumb rather than licking the chocolate off it himself. Or just _wiping_ the chocolate off it. Yes, of _course_.

Sam craned his neck a little to the side to see if he could catch Kevin’s eyes. The AP Boy Wonder, as Dean referred to him, was—a little to everyone’s surprise—kind of good friends with Cas now, too. More importantly, he seemed to _get_ some of Cas’s weirdnesses in a way that the rest of them just couldn’t cope with. Sometimes Sam thought it was a prophet thing, but at other times he was pretty sure it was a ‘newer to life and all its vagaries’ thing.

Kevin had his knees curled up to his chest in his deep chair, the angel tablet resting on top of them, and he was staring at the runes with the determination of someone actively trying to make his own eyes bleed.

“You don’t like _chocolate?_ Cas, what’ve we been teaching you all this time? _Jesus,_ ” Dean finally exclaimed, indignant, except not about the fact that Cas had just _stuck his finger_ into his mouth.

Sam looked around. Was there a magical equivalent of ‘Punk’d?’ Should he start feeling under the edge of the table for audio recording devices? (Or hex bags?)

Cas looked up from his book again and his eyes narrowed, just slightly. “I’m very sure there’s nothing _you_ could teach me about Jesus,” Cas answered, because Castiel was a testy little shit sometimes for all his pretty manners.

Dean spluttered. “That’s not—it’s— _okay_ , seriously, here. Have some.” He fumbled for the bar he’d been eating and broke off a piece. “Wait. Where did you try chocolate before?”

Sam had been wondering the same. When he’d been on the run and making his way to them? If that was why Cas didn’t like chocolate, that would be genuinely heartbreaking.

Cas met both of their eyes and sighed at them, a small huff through his nose that was very similar to the noise he’d made the first time Dean had tried to offer him an issue of Busty Asian Beauties. (Sam knew that Dean was trying to be helpful in getting Cas adapted to human life, but on the scale of unhelpful that had been extreme, and probably more helpful for the monster in Dean’s closet than _either_ Dean or Cas.)

“I don’t need to try something to know I will not enjoy it,” he pronounced, firmly.

“Don’t give me that,” Dean retorted. “So you haven’t even tried it?”

“I know that cacao is very bitter,” Cas told them, haughtily. “And that it was used as currency, and as an aphrodisiac, neither of which I need. It smells very nice, but anything that must be mixed with that much sugar to be palatable probably does not taste very good.”

This time, Sam blinked. “Cas, we wouldn’t eat it if it didn’t taste good,” he corrected, gently.

“Sam, humans very willingly drink _coffee_ ,” Cas pointed out, frowning, “and eat things that are spicy enough to upset their digestion. I know about the Scoville scale now.”

Hm. Touché, Castiel. It was true, his introduction to hot wings hadn’t gone well.

“Well… I guess you’re not wrong about that,” Sam admitted. “It’s probably for the best anyway, chocolate’s not healthy.”

Cas looked thoughtful, and a little smug. Dean scowled like that was a personal affront and shoved a small rectangle of plain milk chocolate—because Sam’s big brother had the palate of a twelve-year-old and didn’t even like to eat _dark_ chocolate—in Cas’s direction.

“See, buddy? Now you definitely have to try it, weren’t you the one who said that everything unhealthy seems to taste really nice?” Sam’s big brother announced. He waggled the unattractively mushy bit of sweet, already melting with just the heat of his fingers— _Dean, yet another reason to see if you could get to like dark chocolate_ —two inches in front of Cas’s nose.

Sam wrinkled his nose, but he was pretty sure that anything he said in response was just going to make Dean _more_ obnoxious about this, not less. If Dean gave a fallen angel diabetes, they were going to have _words,_ though.

Cas rolled his eyes, six feet of blue eyes, dark scruff, and not-quite-angelic superiority, and, reluctantly, tasted the chocolate.

By leaning down, wrapping his hand securely around Dean’s wrist, and delicately sucking the half-melted chocolate from the tips of Dean’s fingers. With small motions of his lips and the visible tip of his tongue skirting across skin.

Sam, in the process of choking down a very unmanly noise of shock, almost overturned his laptop onto the floor.

Dean’s mouth sagged open. The sound of him swallowing was so loud it practically _echoed_ through the atrium. Sam could almost hear his brother’s pupils dilating. _No-one_ was breathing.

 _Holy. Shit._ What?! Okay, what, no, _everyone_ knew that Cas had pretty table manners, and a vague knowledge of pretty much every human culture imaginable, but no matter how Sam wracked his brain he could _not_ think of any conceivable culture where that kind of thing would have been normal—

Wait, was Cas _smiling?_

There was a soft, nearly-obscene wet _smack_ as Castiel pulled away. He licked his lips with a thoughtful, pleased rumble in his throat that sounded like the Impala starting up after a long stretch in the garage. And if _Sam_ was thinking that, he could only imagine—

No. Nope. He _didn’t_ want to know what his brother was imagining. Sam Winchester was going to sit here in paralyzed silence, too shocked by what he was witnessing to move, and firmly _not imagine_ what was going through Dean’s brain.

“See?” Dean managed, deep in his throat, pulling his hand back as if suddenly remembering he’d had it up. And yep, Sam had heard _that_ throat-heavy note in his brother’s voice in a hundred seedy bars, on a thousand different occasions, none of which Sam Winchester had ever wanted to be anywhere near. Dean almost never needed a wingman, what he normally needed was a _parachute_. “It’s good, right? Uh, the chocolate? I mean—”

“It’s… good. Hmmm. I could change my mind,” Cas allowed, licking his lips absently. Dean’s eyes greedily followed the bright slip of his tongue.

“Would you like some bleach for your brain?” Kevin asked Sam, politely, shoving to his feet with the angel tablet crushed to his chest with both arms. “I’m going to go stick my head in some.”

Cas blinked, just once, and his head tipped to the side. His attention flickered away from Dean for just one heartbeat, and he turned and glanced over his shoulder. “That can’t be good for you, Kevin.” He turned back to Dean and raised his chin, proudly. “I would like another piece, please.”

Then he opened his mouth like a damned _baby bird_.

“ _Goddammit,_ ” Sam muttered, and followed Kevin out so fast that, with his long stride, he overtook him on their way out the entryway. It was still not fast enough to keep from hearing what was either a soft smack of lips on skin or the sound of Castiel breaking the door to Dean’s closet _wide open_.

Sam wasn’t the least bit sorry that Cas was here—no, not at all.

The next talk he was getting about human customs, though, was going to be the one about _privacy_.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> Is Castiel being a sly asshole? Does he really just have no idea? Who knows!
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Theobroma, for anyone curious, is the genus of plants to which cacao belongs.
> 
> Once again, all credit to the lovelies of the [Profound Bond](https://discord.gg/profoundbond) Discord server—it's a wonderful place, come join us!


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